Category: Uncategorised

Unfortunately there have been several unwanted comments posted on Living Wittily. And unfortunately I am not able to check the blog daily at present. Fortunately a couple of good friends alerted me to the problem. So for the time being I have implemented the comment moderation protocol, which means if you comment your comment will only appear once I've seen it.

I hope in a few weeks when my broadband is set up again to revert to the open forum approach. But for now I want the security of controlling who puts what on the blog. Apologies to all who regularly come by and comment – but responsible bloggers will understand the problem and the reasons for using moderation. And thanks to my friends who let me know there was a problem.

Once life regains equilibrium I think I'll do a couple of posts on comments, blogging and the difference between good interactive discussion and banal if mischievous nonsense. Or maybe not – the differences are obvious.

Appearances on this blog will continue to be sporadic till the broadband is connected. Currently I am working on the fruit of the spirit, speiclaising in patience as the blessed dongle takes half an eternity to load the typepad compose page.

So a quick update.

We moved into the house on Wednesday and so fare breakages total two pasta plates.

The removal men were brilliant – plumbed in the washing machine, lifted a couple of carpets we were going to replace.

Unloaded in two hours.

In the next 48 hours we redecorated two rooms (three coats to cover the pink and blue ceiling and walls – and had carpets bought and laid in the same 48 hours.

This means energy levels are depleted and I don't have one of those three pronged things you use with mobile phones which are similarly depleted.

The neighbours have both acalled in to welcome us and looks like we will have good folk around us.

The study is right now in process of being reconstructed in its new and smaller room – this simply means choices about whether wall space for pictures is as important as wall space for bookshelves – don't jump to conclusions as to which priority will be prioritised!

For the rest of the day I will slowly replace the books on the shelves, doing a wee weeding process as I go.

For now – just off for the half mile walk to the local shopping centre to test drive the coffee shop.

The blog will return to its daily posting when the broadband is reconnected – could be a week or two thoug – so patience would be a fruit of the spirit I'm not the only one having to cultivate.

Blessings and shalom.

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Spent last night with the folk at Newton Mearns Baptist Church, doing one of the talks in their Spring Break series on the Gospel and Culture. The talk was the second in the series, and the theme was "Positive Attitudes to Culture".

Decided to talk about how Christian attitudes, rooted in the Be(atitudes) lead to a positive critique of some of the worst excesses of current cultural experience. Peacemaking in a confrontational culture; mercy in a ruthless culture; meeknes in an ego drenched culture; justice in a systemically unequal culture. But not only critique – the Beatitudes point towards alternative dispositions of character that enhance rather than diminish human life. Meekness, righteous actions, peacemaking and mercy import significant moral and social responsibility into cultural expressions, and so characterise the attitudes and practices of those who claim to follow Jesus, that they constitute a transformative expression of the Church's mission.

Passion for peacemaking expresses the Gospel value of reconciliation; it is evidenced in discipleship practices such as forgiveness, welcome and hospitality, and is exemplified in the lived practice and experience of people like Desmond Tutu. Thus positive Be(attitudes) rooted in gospel values and expressed in discipleship practices becomes a process of salt and light interacting with their cultural context. Likewise hunger for righteousness, commitment to mercy and the disposition of meekness.

Seemed to work and led to some good discussion on the timelessness of human nature's capacity to turn creativity, social exchange, economic activity, moral norms and other cultural expressions either towards human flourishing or towards human diminishment. Sin is as imaginative and banal as it ever was; likewise, goodness and humanising creativity. What seems unarguable is the rapidly increasing pace of cultural change, and the exponential development of technology as an ambivalent nexus of social forces within which we now have to live our lives – as witnessing communities to a life that is cruciform in shape and resurrection oriented towards hope.

Much to ponder.

Hopkins is one of my canoncial poets, and the poem below an example of sublime poetry that in the act of reading slips ineluctably into prayer. And prayer in language that enables us to articulate longings usually too deep within us, and too elusive, to be brought by our own words to the light of God's day.

Years ago I read Bernard Martin's biography to gain a sense of context; in fact I came to understand why Hopkins' poetry delivers such a potent word of summoning towards that which I longed for. Christian vocation isn't always to a task or role – it is to being, and to authentic being at that. To be that which it is our God given nature to be, in all its unique peculiarity, its precious and unprecedented once-for-allness. When Augustine exulted in God's love as loving us as if we were the only one to love, he too sensed the miracle of a love that draws us to that place where, in accepting who we are, we say to God, "What I do is me – for this I came."

And far from an endorsement of the aggressive and selfish individualism pervasive of our culture and invasive of our relationships, Hopkins' poem is a celebration of what it means to surrender to the true self God made us to be. The sonnet form of fourteen lines is my favourite poetic form – in such disciplined brevity, and care for structure, Hopkins delivers one of the most expansive expositions of why it is God made us – "what are human beings that you care for them" – Hopkins' answer centres on Christ, and on our calling to be Christ-like. 

As kingfishers catch fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies
dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each
hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its
name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.
Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Not good enough!
One gold medal from an entire Olympic event.
Nearly £6 million pounds invested.
And all we have to show for it is one gold medal.
What about value for money, eh?
Why are we floating around on a sea of mediocrity, eh?
How come when our athletes do their best it looks ordinary? Tell me that? How come?

The above rant isn't mine. I changed the font colour not to indicate red for anger but to disown the comments. Young people from a temperate climate country, that at a national level invests minimally in winter sports, are subjected to this kind of uninformed criticism by punters, politicians, commentators, news reporters and everyone else who has an opinion but little talent. And our own TV news networks lead the way. And I listen to them spouting forth indignation, and wonder if any of them has ever been good enough to get down a hill on a wee plastic sledge without falling off.

So here's what I think. Amy Williams won a gold. Rightly we celebrate that as a great personal and sporting achievement. Our other athletes didn't win, some didn't perform as well as we know they can. It happens. Did they not try? Were they complacent? Did they give the training regime a body swerve? Was it their fault and should we blame them for not being better than their best?

Och for goodness sake. Why don't we celebrate effort as well as excellence? Why is encouragement of those who pour huge chunks of their lives into their sport such a hard thing to say but such an important thing to hear?

This ritual humiliation of those who don't bring home the medals,

this wingeing and whining about poor performances,

this constant narking at folk who happen to be two seconds slower than the medal winners at skiing down an alpine slope at speeds of up to 90 kilometres,

this head shaking dimissiveness of a bobsleigh team who in a split second lose control and risk life and limb as their machine hurtles around, over and past them.

Just stop it.

Anyway, if it's the money that's a problem then instead of the Government's minuscule £5.8 million, why not ask Wayne Rooney, Peter Lampard, and any three other top earners in the Premier league to double the amount by donating 3 month's wages over the next four years. Snowboarders and skiers, curlers and sledgers, don't get the celebrity status and money professional footballers do. Instead they show dedication, enthusiasm, discipline, live with disappointment, strugggle for funds and equipment and sponsorship, love their sport and do it for reasons other than money.

So don't give me it – and don't give them it. Instead, why not just thank them that they have represented their country well and with dignity.

Rant over – till the next time British media have a go at athletes whose skis the same reporters and commentators are not worthy to unloose!

Right, feel better now!  

Need a poem. Here's one.

A prose poem – but the distinction is about form, not substance.

This is a poem. Actually, this is a really good poem.

………………………..

What I have learned so far

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I

not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,

looking into the shining world? because, proper-

ly attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is sug-

gestion. Can one be passionate about the just, the

ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit

to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a

story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.

Though buds toward radiance. The gospel of

light is the crossroads of — indolence or action.

Be ignited, or be gone.

(Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems. Volume Two, Page 57).

.

Came across the poem below while looking for something else. Didn't recognise the poet so went looking and found she has written a book with the first line as a title. 

Markova is a psychotherapist in Vermont, and is far better known there than here. She is a significant influence in the Random Acts of Kindness movement, which is enough for me to be interested. If you want to know more you her website is here.

The poem itself is a beautiful statement of determined vitality, a description of risk-taking in order to be frutiful, an attempt at transforming wistfulness into lived purpose. 

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

Fully Alive – Dawna Markova

To serve God wittily in the tangle of our minds….

This post was written three years ago when I started blogging as Living Wittily. It's based on the motto at the head of the blog page, words of Sir Thomas More, from Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons.

I read it every now and then to check it is still mostly what I am about – and it is. I've posted it again as a blogging reiteration, a restatement of why the time and energy to do this blog seems worthwhile. This is now the 1001st post – a lot of words. I hope some of them have mattered and made a difference.

……………………………………………………

Almost every word of this phrase has significance for an obedient
following after Christ. At least for me. Unpacking this I use the inclusive
'we' – others may not think or feel this way, which is fine. I would be
interested though to hear from you what you think it might mean "to serve God wittily in the tangle of
our minds".

To serve
implies obedience, but as willing grateful surrender, an inner attitude of
consistent readiness, from which each action and activity derives its value as
an act of devotion following after Christ.

To serve wittily
means an end to naivete, a call to attentiveness and alert observation of the
world in which we live and move, and within which we are called to serve. So
having  our wits about us will mean, (and this only for starters – feel
free to add to this unpacking process)

1. Not being rendered myopic by cultural
   assumptions, but rather
   see the world through the lens of the Gospel – not war but peacemaking;
   not greed but generosity; not lies but truthfulness; not power over others
   but power serving others.
2. Not being pushed around by consumer
   pressures but rather
   being intentionally shaped and transformed by Jesus. And what are the
   economics of the Kingdom; what is it that profits a human being?
3. Not being morally
   domesticated by ethical and cultural accommodations, but rather seeking to live
   in the radical freedom of the Kingdom of God where the only rule is God’s rule. The
   culture of hard realism challenged by visionary compassion; the idolatry
   of the bottom line questioned by gestures of sacrificial extravagance; the
   semantic cosmetics of political correctness superceded by communities of
   Jesus embodying radically inclusive love.
4. Not being embarrassed by the evidence of
   Christendom in decline, but rather
   seeking and embodying a lifestyle more faithfully rooted in the teaching
   of Jesus.

The tangle of our minds –
tidiness and system, an imposed order on life, what P T Forsyth called the lust
for lucidity – none of these answer to the sheer messiness and inconvenience of
the world, our culture and our times. There is that in the Gospel which resists
being combed into shape, style and fashion. ( I use the metaphor as one who no
longer has much use for a comb!) My own experience has been that Christian
theology, ethics and practice have to relate to a world constitutionally ambiguous,
unpredictable, inconsistent – and each human life is entangled in the
consequent joy and suffering that is a human life together.

And it is the tangle of our minds;
speaking here only for myself, my deepest theological convictions, and even my
most passionate spiritual experiences, are often rooted in the life of the
mind. Thought, reflection, consideration, contemplation, reason, understanding,
prayer – however deeply I feel the truth of things, they become most real and I
own them as life convictions mostly as they are received and welcomed as ideas
rooted in experience and expressed in the life God gives me to lead. Loving God
with my mind is an essential not an optional devotional attitude and aptitude
in my own spirituality – and for better or worse.

  So as a motto, ‘to serve God wittily in the tangle of our minds’,
provides a number of perspectives on my personal discipleship. However, in case
I get too serious about this, serving God wittily could also mean humorously,
good humouredly, and with hilarity. Fun and laughter being an essential
presupposition of healthily, gladly, en-joy-ably, serving God.
That sets me thinking about the spiritual discipline of fun – is there a
discipline of
fun, an obligation under God to be a gladness maker?!

Was speaking with a close friend the other night and quoted the text about the threefold cord that is not easily broken. The faithful strengthening that comes from woven companionship has been important in this and many friendships.

Decided
to play around with this maxim from Ecclesiastes, that good natured Jew who was
gently sceptical about life, God and the elusiveness of happiness:  “a three stranded cord is not easily broken.”
(4.12).

Tried a little Midrash on this, exploring the multiple choice interpretations, not
to choose the right one but to see the rich possibilities in each.  The complete verse says, “If one person can
overpower another who is alone, two can resist his opponent. A three stranded cord
is not easily broken.”

The Jewish
setting and background is that of a journey. The danger of being on the road
alone. Vulnerability and risk are lessened when there are those who stand with
you, one on each side. That’s what friendship is. Those who stand on either
side of you, between you and those who mean harm or hurt.

Or from
another angle, this time Christian, the threefold strand could be the
companionship of the Triune love that is God. In the old Irish prayer, “I bind
unto myself today, the strong name of the Trinity.” The grace of Christ, the
love of God, the fellowship of the Spirit.

Then
again, from an ethical perspective “these three abide, faith, hope and love,
but the greatest of these is love.” Yet they belong together in a threefold strand.
Love without faith and hope lacks trust and promise. But where there is trust,
and forward looking promise, then love lives again and abides.

Whichever
way we take it, the three stranded cord of human friendship, of God’s enfolding
love, of the cardinal virtues, provides support and strength that is beyond any
one of us, but belongs to us together. Indeed human friendship, entwined with
divine love, and kept faithful by the three virtues, is just about the most
secure place any of us can be.

The whole history of Christianity,

and the history of the world,

would have followed a different course

if it had not been that again and
again

the theology of the cross

became a theology of glory,

and that the
church of the cross

became a church of glory.

—Theologian Emil Brunner, The Mediator, 1927

The cross is “the signature of the one who is risen.”

—Biblical theologian Ernst Käsemann, Perspectives on Paul, 1969

Both quotations used as epigraphs in an article by Michael Gorman in Catalyst, see here http://www.catalystresources.org/issues/313gorman.html